Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Ascent Aspirations Magazine is an independent press and quarterly online literary publication. A print anthology is also distributed semi-annually.
I chose AAM as a companion site to last week's review of Underground Voices Magazine, as both publications emphasize short fiction, poetry, and science fiction that cover the themes of social alienation, political angst, and cultural malaise. Implied is a body of work whose dark diction and bleak narrative offers a stark and gritty examination of social interaction and human emotion not found in the sanitized alternatives now available across the net. In light of the content presented and the audience sought, to what extent have they succeeded in creating an online presence immediately recognizable for its subaltern yet metastasized originality of voice and layout? The results, unfortunately, are mixed.
Unlike UVM, the layout of Ascent Aspirations Magazine is well organized and easy to navigate. The home page conveniently offers an index column listing current and past issues in addition to a set of recommended links that borders the center graphic of AAM's logo. Clicking on the "current issue" hyperlink leads to another intuitively arranged page where AAM displays author names by genre category. To the far right hovers a featured work of visual art, which, for this quarter, is the abstract expressionism of Patricia Carroll, who conveys her pieces with a surprising freshness despite the over saturation of the genre itself.
Although the layout is straightforward, it is quintessentially bland and not at all suggestive of literary audacity; AAM's alternating font colors of light blue, red, and yellow are neither striking nor provocative. Though it is understandable that such an underground outfit may not have the necessary resources to craft a visually sophisticated website, limited financial means has never precluded creativity. Take for example the avant-garde literary and visual movement of Vorticism that took place in London just prior to WWI. Hardly known and struggling within the suffocating vestiges of Victorian hypocrisy, founder Wyndham Lewis still managed to distinguish his underfunded publication of BLAST with its iconoclastic and erratic font size that continues to attract admirers even today. The most typographic creativity AAM displays is an italicized font for headers and the occasional water colored "Ascent" logo that hovers awkwardly in hues of smudged purple and orange. For a magazine that claims to publish the works of subversive authors its layout is in serious need of overhaul.
The content put forth by AAM is fairly typical of most online literary publications, a varied blend of literary and visual amateurs, veterans, and talents in progress. I, for one, welcome such a mixture because few other mediums allow for writers and artists of such contrasting styles and degrees of skill to share and compare their works. One such gem among AAM's short story submissions is Lee Gimenez's "Enzyme." Gimenez imparts narrative through the format of several email exchanges that takes place between two scientists, Samantha Ryker and Leonard Smith:
From: Samantha Ryker
Date: October 11, 2012
To: Leonard Smith
Subject: Enzyme
Leonard,
I have some great news! While working (as always) on the enzyme project, I came up with a new formula. I think this will give us what all of us have been working on for the last five years. Yes, you heard me right. We'll now be able to make ethanol from wood chips. I know it sounds incredible, after all of the dead ends. I can't wait to get in the lab and start working with this.
Regards,
Samantha
This is just one of a series of emails to follow, through which Samantha's scientific break through is subsequently challenged by Leonard. What unfolds is a psychological exploration of scientific single mindedness whose consequences can portend and lead to great disaster. Gimenez's short story executes this format flawlessly. His handling of telling a story through email correspondence is the embodiment of experimental online literary content at its finest.
Of course, there are in AAM plenty of Charles Bukowski imitators and overly maudlin and tired relationship pieces to go around. Asides from Patricia Carroll, I was none too pleased by the crop of visual artists available for the current quarter.
In conclusion, I enjoyed UVM and AAM's selection of entries. It is clearly evident that much effort is given to ensuring the highest quality of submissions. Nevertheless, the primary weakness of both magazines is their less than stellar internet layouts and the near absence of thematic organization. In addition to random entries, why not collaborate with writers around a particular style or theme? Perhaps, and again through collaboration, why not seek to articulate a new philosophy not only in content but also in terms of layout?
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